November 2009

11/26/2009

This is my husband's favorite holiday, because it's all about delicious food. This year I'm making a recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes: Candied Yam Cupcakes and a yummy sweet potato casserole recipe from Paula Dean. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are taking care of the turkey and stuffing and we'll be heading over to their house to help finish the mashed potatoes, asparagus, and broccoli casserole. I'm also looking forward to trying pumpkin cheesecake made from fresh pumpkin made by my sister-in-law. Today is going to be a great day!!

11/17/2009

This recipe came out of Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals 2 cookbook, and it was absolutely delicious. I hope that I'll never be single again, because I just got married. Rachael decided upon this clever name, because a reader made this for her boyfriend and he proposed that night.

Even though this isn't a Martha Stewart recipe, I thought I would share a picture. It was just too good not to! We added freshly grated parmesan to the top - even though the recipe didn't call for it. Tonight we're making tacos - YUM.

11/16/2009

I was really unsure how these cupcakes were going to turn out. The thought of pistachio cupcakes, even though I love pistachios, didn't sit well with me. I always sample the batter when it's finished before I bake them, and this batter was sooooo good. In fact, my actual words were, "This batter is so good I want to bath in it." And my husband's response was, "That wasn't melodramatic." I would have rated these cupakes higher, but I accidentally over baked them. The timer on our oven isn't very loud and I was occupied with sweeping the kitchen floor and doing dishes. Even though they were baked a little longer than they were supposed to be, they still tasted really yummy.

The hard part was having to make a paste out of the pistachios and chopping up an additional cup of pistachios. The easy part was the icing - it took less than a minute.

11/13/2009

I really want to keep my home as clean as Martha would (I wish I could afford to have a cleaning service) but I just can't seem to catch up. Our adopted dog turned out to be pregnant and had 7 puppies the day before our wedding and we have been playing catch up ever since the wedding. Right now, our house is a wreck and it's making me a little crazy. Plus I've only written about one-third of our thank you notes and really want to send them out by the end of this weekend. Martha would definitely be disappointed. I wonder how she makes it work.

To make matters worse, our basement flooded yesterday and ruined a lot of personal items. Plus, I went to the doctor on Wednesday as a follow up after being hospitalized for 5 days the week of our wedding and was told that my energy level won't return to normal for 4 to 6 weeks. The doctor informed me that I need to rest and take it easy which is incredibly frustrating when you have a to do list with hundreds of items. I'm the type of person that likes to work really hard and when I feel sick I get really bummed out. Okay, I'm going to stop whining now, because my husband will be home in 30 minutes with pizza from Pizza Hut {I don't even want to know what Martha would say about that} and a movie for our date night. My goal is to get two more cupcake recipes completed by the end of the weekend!

11/09/2009

These cupcakes were super easy to make (especially since I got a Martha Stewart blue KitchenAid mixer from one of our wedding guests) and they were pretty good. I didn't give them a higher rating, because they just weren't as good as some of the others. If you like spice cake and want an easy spice cupcake, try this one. I couldn't find the recipe on the Martha Stewart website, so you've got to buy the cupcake book to get the recipe. I made fall cupcake toppers to jazz them up a little.

You might be wondering where I've been lately. Life basically got in the way. I got married a week ago, was hospitalized for five days the week before my wedding, and our adopted dog had seven puppies (we didn't know she was pregnant when we adopted her). I'm back and ready to become more like Martha, so stay tuned for regular posts.